MY new year challenge is familiar – how to be a great dad, yet find time to watch all major football and rugby matches – but what are the tests ahead for our three party leaders?

The start of 2011 is a good time to explore the hurdles and potential pitfalls in another defining 12 months at Westminster, starting with David Cameron.

I pose the question as the Prime Minister basks in a commanding position, beyond his wildest dreams in those nervous days of May, when the Conservatives fell embarrassingly short of a Commons majority.

Displaying impressive energy and surefootedness, he has sailed through his first seven months in office, barely raising a sweat in the job he appears born to do.

Retaining his popularity, he leads a clearly right-wing government – one making spending and welfare cuts that would make Mrs Thatcher blush and planning back-door privatisations of schools and the NHS – yet poses convincingly, for many, on the crucial centre-ground.

As a victim of grumpy Gordon – “One more question and that’s it”, the former PM once shouted – I can vouch for Mr Cameron’s commendable willingness to listen.

But the new year brings new dangers from both within Mr Cameron’s party and from the voters, if his gamble on economic recovery fails to pay off.

Tory right-wingers are restless and revolts are growing over his failure to wage war on the hated European Union and the hints of a future pact to secure a permanent coalition with the Liberal Democrats.

This year, Mr Cameron will come under fierce pressure to assert proper Tory values, blue in tooth and claw. If they are interpreted as “victories” over the Lib Dems, the fractures in the coalition will widen.

Away from Westminster, the Prime Minister has staked his reputation on there being no return to the dark days of the Eighties for the likes of the North-East, as the savage cuts bite.

In conversation with me, he ruled out leaps in unemployment and poverty and pledged to close the North-South divide – an extraordinarily ambitious trio of commitments at a time of continued economic turmoil. Mr Cameron has staked everything on Britain’s fragile economic recovery surviving the unprecedented spending squeeze, that many experts believe could send it back into a slump.

This week, the Government - which vowed, in opposition, to ban bankers’ bonuses above £2,000 – caved in and allowed billions for City traders.

If a similar chasm develops between the rhetoric – “We are all in this together” – and the reality on jobs, incomes, home repossessions etc., Mr Cameron will be exposed. And he appears to have no escape route.

CONGRATULATIONS to Sunderland Football Club for seeking to sign up David Miliband as a director – but the Black Cats should not expect much help on the training ground.

The South Shields MP and defeated Labour leadership candidate played for the legendary Downing Street “Demon Eyes” side while a No.10 aide, but has not tied up his boots for many, many years.

I once asked Mr Miliband why – unlike fellow rising stars Ed Balls, Andy Burnham and James Purnell – he no longer turned out in the annual Labour vs Hacks grudge matches.

“I had more enthusiasm, than talent,” he admitted.